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Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly driving important developments in technology and business. It is being employed across a wide range of industries with impact on almost every aspect of the creation. The availability of large amounts of training data and advances in affordable high computing power are fueling AI’s growth. AI intersects with intellectual property (IP) in a number of ways.

There is no universal definition of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is generally considered to be a discipline of computer science that is aimed at developing machines and systems that can carry out tasks considered to require human intelligence. Machine learning and deep learning are two subsets of AI. In recent years, with the development of new neural networks techniques and hardware, AI is usually perceived as a synonym for “deep supervised machine learning”.

Machine learning uses examples of input and expected output (so called “structured data” or “training data”), in order to continually improve and make decisions without being programmed how to do so in a step-by-step sequence of instructions. This approach mimics actual biological cognition: a child learns to recognize objects (such as cups) from examples of the same objects (such as various kinds of cups). Today application of machine learning are widespread including email spam filtering, machine translation, voice, text and image recognition.

Areas of our work

The growth of AI across a range of technical fields raises a number of policy questions with respect to IP. The main focus of those questions is whether the existing IP system needs to be modified to provide balanced protection for machine created works and inventions, AI itself and the data AI relies on to operate. WIPO has started an open process to lead the conversation regarding IP policy implications.

In the global innovation economy, demand for IP rights – patents, trademarks, industrial designs and copyright – is rapidly increasing and becoming more complex. AI, big data analytics and new technologies such as blockchain can be used to address the growing challenges facing IP offices.

Topics and issues

From stories, to reports, news and more, we publish content on the topics most discussed in the field of AI and IP.

In a world in which AI is playing an ever-expanding role, including in the processes of innovation and creativity, Professor Ryan Abbott considers some of the challenges that AI is posing for the IP system.

Saudi inventor HadeelAyoub, founder of the London-based startup, BrightSign, talks about how she cameto develop BrightSign, an AI-based smart glove that allows sign language users tocommunicate directly with others without the assistance of an interpreter.